11 South American young people, participating in a Tuscany Region mobility project (called “Mario Olla” project). These people were in Italy for a 12 weeks internship period.

Even if the participants came from different geographical areas, they had a common feature: they were in the same status and in a process of improvement of business-related skills. That is the reason why CEDIT decided to choose this peculiar target: it seemed very interesting to introduce the BMC Model to people that are now defining their future activity. In addition to that, we thought it would be easier for these people to have innovative ideas, since they were living a real work experience and, for that reason, they could have good causes for thought.

BMC Model tests were structured as a process composed of 3 different phases:

Explaining to the group the features, functioning and aims of the tool.

Autonomous work at home for the participants; filling in the questionnaires.

Group discussion about BMC Model results, return of filled questionnaires.

This 3-phases operating method resulted to be very telling in allowing young participants to reflect about innovation and business modelling. In particular we think that asking participants to take as starting point the companies where they were doing their internships was a winning idea, because this allowed them to be more concrete and more engaged.

For what concerns Innovation Camp, CEDIT found it interesting to test it with a target of young entrepreneurs (under 40 years old), in order to understand the efficacy of this tool also on people who had already established their own businesses.

The competencies trained during the Innovation Camp were, then, those related to innovation, which is strictly linked to education to entrepreneurship and sense of initiative (7th key competence for lifelong learning of the European Union).

Entrepreneurs were divided in 3 groups, 2 out of them were composed of 5 people (4 in the afternoon session, after Session 1) and one was composed of 4 people from the beginning.

The challenge was related to the “Made in Italy” protection and to the possible actions against falsification of Italian goods.

The Innovation Camp was held in a quiet but competitive environment. Young entrepreneurs worked in 3 different meeting rooms, in order to not influence each other. The “hand in sessions” were held in a common meeting room, with all the participants, the Camp Leader and the Facilitators.

The entrepreneurs worked with the materials delivered by Camp Leader (IDEA sheets, post-it, etc.) and had internet access to develop their ideas.

During “Ideas Generation” session (morning) participants demonstrated a great innovative competency, creating many ideas. During “Idea selection and concept formulation” session participants had some problem to select the idea to develop in session 3. In this phase, facilitators helped them to work with IDEA sheets (above all “Idea sieve”) in order to select the most suitable idea.

The “Final pitch” session was held in front of Camp Leader, Facilitator and one external member (they all composed the Jury). The latter didn’t participate to the daily activities so that she could give a totally independent evaluation on the ideas presented.

This project (n° 2012-1-IT1-LEO05-02794) has been funded with support from the European Commission.This publication reflects the view only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.